UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor: Investigate the Possibility that Israel is Committing the Crime of Genocide Against the Palestinian People

ICRC: The Relevance of the International Criminal Court for Palestine by Rizeq Shuqair

Palestine’s accession to the International Criminal Court (ICC), often referred to as the Rome Statute, is under close scrutiny at the moment. A similar debate took place few years ago following Israel’s 2008/2009 military attack on the Gaza Strip. This accession, which aims at prosecuting Israeli political and military officials accused of committing serious crimes, was brought into the limelight when the UN accorded Palestine the ‘non-member observer state’ status. It became of critical importance following Israel’s latest military offensive against the Gaza Strip, during which war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed, triggering the establishment, by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), of an Independent, International Commission of Enquiry for the Occupied Palestinian Territory…

Genocide: ‘Genocide’ refers to any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.